Well there’s 4 mcm in the gulf assuming mcm task in future is covered by pairs of the 12m usvs as currently under trial the tasking required say 8 12m usvs and about 120 people? So could a bay cope with that in a mother ship role or from pier side to an extent possibly would there be spare capacity possibly for 60 RM and a couple of wildcat? Can you mix and match and have remote operates controlling craft from the uk?? Who know it would be up to experimenting. Would you replace a bay with an Albion if task increased??Jake1992 wrote:In the gulf do you believe mcm can be conducted by the off board system operating from shore ? IMO I don’t think this could be done so intern you’d still need a new Bay there st all times to be the Mother Ship.
In the Caribbean it could under take all the roles you’ve mentioned but the vessel it’s self would still need to be there.
This is what I’m getting at the bay Mk2s operating as flexible mother ships for all sorts of roles is perfectly fine I am not arguing that at all. What I am arguing is the numbers required to under take all the tasks they’d be set at any one time, in this I don’t believe 6 would be enough.
1 - in the gulf mcm
1 - in the Caribbean doing a multitude of tasks
1 - part of NATO standing mcm group
1 - conducting amphibious ops ( either training or operationally )
1 - doing security roles where needed
2 - in refit / work up
The question would be do you consider the gulf a priority to commit such a presence in future?
Caribbean yep a fwd presence good idea and many benefits.
All the last roles could be covered by 3 vessels doing what is required when necessary and not on an enduring bases 2 vessels being available out of the 3 at any one time.
I’d be experimenting with the 3 bays and 2 Albion’s and be using funds for the systems